(01-31-2019, 05:10 PM)Cleatwood Wrote:

(01-31-2019, 03:47 PM)TJBender Wrote: And yet spending remains the problem.

Just sayin', slash foreign aid, cut bait on military projects that are way overbudget and badly underperforming (lookin' at you, F-35), end projects that are aimed to replace perfectly capable platforms with new ones because Northrop Grumman wants money (lookin' at you, B-21), take the hundreds of billions of dollars saved by updating jets that are still able to kick the [BLEEP] of 99% of what's out there and pump those funds into:


1. Fixing the VA and providing better support for troops after their tour ends
2. Cutting taxes

Defense spending alone is a constant, massive sink on the budget, and until someone tells Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop and General Dynamics that the US will not put together a clean sheet aircraft or ship every time their stock price dips, that's not going to stop. Our marquee fighter jet, the one designed to replace the F-16 and F-18 that still dominate virtually every enemy they'd come up against, was unable to beat a WWI biplane in a dogfight and has a helmet that's designed so well that pilots vomit into it when using it, and since it's a full-face design...yeah.

/rant

If you cut military spending down to a level where we're just the best in the world, not decades ahead of countries that would love to start a war with us, we'd have a much lower deficit. The countries we're most likely to see in combat anytime soon are North Korea or Middle Eastern nations. North Korea's military hasn't really made it all the way out of the 1960s yet. Middle Eastern nations tend to operate 1970s/1980s-vintage US or Soviet fighters. We're not talking about going to war with the aliens from Independence Day here--and even they were beaten by a good ol' F/A-18.

Not yet at least.